Storage Options miScroll review

Summary

Our Score

6/10

Pros

Excellent video codec support

Cons

Poor screen quality

No Android Market

Resisitive touchscreen

Review Price £119.95

The high-end Android tablet market is just getting off the ground, but down in the slums where Far-East imports reign, the shelves have been stacked sky-high for many months. You won't find that many of these cheaper tablets on the high street, but the spec list of Storage Options's MiScroll 7in tablet makes it worth seeking out for a closer look. Let's see if it really merits the effort.

This 7in tablet packs-in features we previously wouldn't have expected to see in a £125 device. It offers a 1GHz processor, Android 2.3 Gingerbread and 4GB of internal memory, plus a couple of neat extras not seen in most other Android tablets.

Its battery is user-replaceable because, just like an Android smartphone, you can pop off the back cover and pull it out yourself. This gives Storage Options the chance to flog you some additional batteries and coloured back covers, on top of the standard glossy black. These covers come in packs of two and retail for a reasonable £14.99. Battery packs are also well-priced, at £19.99 a pop.

This design means that the miScroll doesn't have the natty aluminium body of the previous Scroll tablets though - you have to make do with plastic here. Build quality is respectable at the price. The battery cover is held on with a full 11 clips, giving it a tight seal all the way around the body. At 12mm thick it's not ultra-slim for a 7in tablet but the simplicity of the all-black design mimics more expensive tablets like the BlackBerry PlayBook in a way that's sure to trick some friends into believing you've spent more than you have.Connectivity is handled with a more conspicuous nod to aesthetics than Archos's rival 70 tablet too. The mini HDMI, miniUSB and microSD slot are hidden behind a flip-out plastic panel, leaving just the power socket and headphone jack to clutter-up the bottom edge. The power button and volume controls sit on the right edge, but these too are inconspicuous, finished in the same glossy black as the rest of the body.

This finish picks up fingerprint instantly, and will be transformed into a smudgy mess within minutes, but it's a decent-looking device. It' a pity the back has been emblazoned with a superfluous set of feature icons. The front of the miScroll tablet is home to a trio of three old-fashioned clicky soft keys - the Android standard of Back, Menu and Home, there to help you navigate through Android's virtual halls alongside the 7in resistive touchscreen.